Everything you need to know about Flex and Coworking Offices

Coworking Terminology

There are a lot of terms for describing Coworking and people often use them interchangeably, so let's start off with some basics, to get us all talking the same language.

Coworking or Co-working

• To hyphenate or not to hyphenate, that's... neither here nor there. Grammatically, hyphenated is correct, but more commonly the noble hypen is dropped.
• Coworking is the generic, catch-all term for any use of office space where someone else is the headlease holder and you lisence use of the space under a contract.
• Coworking is what people say when they often mean "Serviced" or "Managed" offices or at places like WeWork.
• Here at Rubberdesk we refer to Coworking Desks as desks that are rentable by the month in open plan offices amongst people
• Coworking Desks tend to be permanent desks where you can leave your belongings at the end of the day, often with a cabinet you can store things in.
• You'll bring your own devices, and leave them there overnight.
• Coworking spaces bring a sense of permanence, without having to commit to a long term rental agreement.
• While Coworking desks tend to be rented by the month, most customers stay using them for years at a time, which does create great familiarity with "work mates" sharing an office.

Hot Desking

• While Coworking is rising in popularity, the opposite is true of Hot Desking, which, like a fad from the nineties has gone out of fashion.
• Hot Desking provides no sense of permanence, as renters leave a clean desk at the end of each day.
• Most Coworking Operators have dramatically reduced the numbers of Hot Desks available, to make room for a more reliable and manageable demand of permanent desks.
• At Rubberdesk we offer very limited Hot Desk spaces. Purely based on demand.

Permanent Desks

• Permanent Desks are just another way of saying Coworking desks that aren't Hot Desks.
• Often in shared offices, you can leave your belongings, the desk is dedicated to you.
• Available to be from month to month on a rolling basis.

Shared Offices

• When a traditional business has spare office space, they can earn by renting out desks to other businesses by the month. These are shared offices.
• Think of it like Airbnb for office space - where businesses earn from spare desk space instead of spare beds.
• While Airbnb is a great analogy, there are a couple of key differences:
  • offices tend to be rented out for months and years at a time, and
  • every Host meets their Guest before they rent, to make sure they are a good fit for each other.
• Rubberdesk started out in a Shared Office with a Learning and Development Company, and we built it for traditional businesses sharing their spare office space.

Serviced or Managed Offices

• Serviced Offices are private office spaces available to rent by the month and without the leasehold agreement.
• When you rent a Serviced Office, all the setup and installation is done for you - there are no refurbishment costs. It's a turnkey office solution that's just ready for you to go.
• You'll take your devices, and you can furnish the space with your own furniture if you like, but this is often taken care of for you.
• The same businesses that run Coworking Desk space provide Managed Offices, and this is where they tend to do most of their business.
• The sweet spot for many operators is 3-5 desks in each private office, however, the bigger players are now realizing that large corporates want managed offices for teams of up to 100 staff.
• Businesses such as Google, Amazon, DropBox and Microsoft all use Serviced and Managed Offices run by Coworking Operators.

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US Coworking & Serviced Office Operators